Anti-Farming backfired..

Yep, it's not working. All it did was send prices through the roof, and drive more to ebay. Players still farm, and sell stuff for real money. There was a player in Kamadan last night selling 1000k of gold for $52.00. The time and R&D money spent on developing the anti-farm code, was wasted. IMHO, that is the single biggest reason for GW2. I'm betting they add auction houses, etc, like WOW™ and LOTR™ have.

You can't expect to make a game without farming.

Especially in GW, a game with relatively nothing to do after beating the game, farming is the only thing that keeps people hooked.

If A-net wants to stop farming, they have to stop letting monsters drop loot, and give us all the same weapons with same stats, skin etc. I don't think someone will like that, though.

OR have desired loot drop more often. Less demand means less farming, no more ebayers, no gold sellers, etc.. BUT it would mean the need for "more to do" would skyrocket. Hopefully GW2 will not be so wealth oriented. I play online games to escape the world and it's worries. I do not like having to "work" in game as hard as I do in RL. Now, if things could be like Second Life™ and you could legally make 100k+ in real money selling cyber realestate. Then that would be different.

no its not anti farming that backfired... lack of updates at game start did that... anti farming code was put in place to try to wash out their mistakes of not nerfing 55 monk in the first place... if u remember in the early days poor griffons [ice griffons and desert griffons] dropped rares and gold like crazy... and it went on for months... if that was stopped in early stages of development there wouldnt be so much gold ingame and prices would never have got so high... coz there wouldnt have been so much gold in game let alone in few players hands... and lets not forget the merchant reset... the first one... the one they didnt roll back... ppl bought stacks of ectos and black dyes for 100gp a piece... ppl that were online then are not "big traders" yea lol...
gg anet... you killed your own economy with your own lazyness...

but then again if they could have rolled back servers then i bet they would... i think that first bug made than implement database rollback in gw

My latest Tin Foil Hat theroy is that is why mobs target monks. Not because they are important to the group, but because they might be farming.

And did you report the person advertising the selling of gold?

It does work. I've reported several of them, put 'em on my friends list, and after a day, I've never seen them again. Several times, I've gotten the "we took care of it" e-mail (not the first one) within hours of reporting the weasels.

Not to mention the keyless chests in THk and those places, I started playing this game practically 1 year ago, 1.1k hours, and I haven't experienced any of these freebies many other players got.

Try no E-Baying? E-Bay banned all virtual world items from being sold.

Have you checked ebay? There ist still as much gold sold as before. Maybe not in america, but here in germany it is.
Wanna take a look?
Go to ebay.de and simply search for guild wars.

Back to topic.
And I'm thinking the same. On their crusade against the professional farmers and bots, ANet took several wrong turns and sacrificed many things that were fun for the ordinary player. Drops are bad, so bad you almost need farmers to get at least the basic eqipment to play. Herobattles with PvE-chars? Forget about it, you don't live long anough to play this game that much to get all the needed equipment....
The antifarmingcode ist utter crap in my opinion. Even while just going for the elonian cartographer title I got "flagged as farmer" by the game, that my drops where wothless when I finnished. "You have to play the game in a normal way and you won't trigger the anti farming code". That's the biggest common misbelief in this game. Fail a missiomn two times in a row and you already triggered it. You might not notice it and think "hey, just bad luck", but luck is not something you can reproduce all the time.

And what do the gold farmers think about it? They love it! Why? Because the first steps reduce the drops to more gold coins and collectables. That's all stackable and is on average increasing their gain.

By the way, does anybody know why on earth ANet reduced the propability of zealous mods in pve about a year ago? Any explanation? During a whole year my guild managed to find exactly ONE zealous mod for sword after that update

Make a game without the possibility to trade, gain wealth, and give everything for free. No gold. gogogo!

Another idea is to make items yours only when you loot them. LOTR does this with some items, they are "bound" to you. They can be sold to the merchants but not eachother.

They have always targeted the monks in the group. Nice theory though...is that why you target monks? LOL

You have to except that gold buyers are part of any MMO, there is no "easy fix" for this.

Any changes to the game would please some and anger others. I have not yet seen an solution that would benefit everyone without damaging game play.

I say the code is useless and should be take out,Bots are still there after al lthis time it only made it harder for legit players to pay for that damn high end gear they want.

IMHO, GW is seeing who blinks first. Personally I think they are cutting their own throat. They know how to fix things (increase drops etc) and how to remove the need or desire to ebay, and they absolutely refuse to do it.

They would rather see the game go under than to concede peoples wishes (player base majority). This is a perfect formula for financial failure. Lineage WAS their (ncsoft) cash cow, it's failing to produce like it once did so they are rethinking gw. I really hope for their sake they truly listen to ALL the players and not those interested in furthering their own agendas.

Which is a bad one. A monk either goes alone or duo. If they were going for the monk first... they'd be doing exactly what everyone wants them to. If they suddenly decided they wanted to go kill the necro for casting that bastard hex on them... things would be alot different.

No. But a GM in the following places:
Ascalon International 1 (people actively spam GW gold sites in here...
Granite Citidel... seriously, this is getting to the stage that i'm thinking Anet owns these bots and is making profit on the side. They don't do a single thing to stop them. Its ridiculous.

Evil sod I agree. As I said it was my latest tin foil hat idea.. :P

As for the part I bolded (gw is selling their stuff on ebay) this is a popular concept in game, most feel they are not doing what they could and only want to make the extra profit. Scary thought indeed.. My concept is as follows, the game is a way for gw to make money, as long as it goes on as is, and doesn't cost more to produce then it brings in, it will continue. When it doesn't it will go poof. Any romantic notions of them wanting it to be a perfect game and making it so we all love it, is truly naive...

Lineage still has more players then GW does or ever will, I believe the total was around 7 million mark for both games (source: old issue of PC Gamer). Granted not many are new subscribers but GW has a way to go before it meets the money Lineage made for NCSoft.

Anyway, I don't see the bot's as a massive problem, they don't effect the game as much as some people believe. Yes, gold buyers might raise the price of certain items but these items are generally out of reach of your 'average' gamer anyway. I'm not defending them but I don't see it as a massive problem that will be the end of GW as some of you seem to think.

Give it a few weeks LOTR will have gold available to those that wish to buy it, Aion will have items/gold for sell within weeks if not days of it's release.

Note on source - I can't remember the exact issue otherwise I'd write up a direct quote.

Anet still maintain there is NO farming code, only an anti-bot code. After seeing Granite Citadel and people complaining about their drops getting worse, I'm inclined to think that's the wrong way 'round.

I wouldn't say it is the 55 as anyone can make a good farming build just visit The Farming Forum and there's lots down there.

The casual farmer farms for his entertainment.

The professional farmer farms for his paycheck.

Guess who will be put off first by making farming more difficult.



There is only one solution to farming: make it useless.

Have the game reward us shiny weapons and armor for our accomplishments, instead of our time spent farming.

This is Guild Wars' most fundamental principle, yet it is poorly implemented PvE-wise. The really cool stuff goes to people who have gold. Period.



For example, what reward do you get from clearing all the mobs and all the quests in UW or FoW with an 8-man team?

Some more XP. Maybe a couple of shards and ectos. A few golden Canes and Ghostly Staves with a single non-perfect mod on it, typically not even in the same attribute of the item's requirement. In any case a lot less than what you could have gotten killing the first few mobs over and over again, alone.

Fulfillment? There's not even a proper ending. Not even a message that says: "Hey, thanks for getting rid of Menzies' posse, they were seriously cramping my style, know what I'm saying? Love, XOXOXOX, Your favorite God of War, Balthazar." Not even a bloody "I Actually Went There Not To Farm But To Do All The Quests And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" t-shirt.



So what do we get instead? DoA. De facto inaccessible to anything but Monks, Elementalists, Rangers and Necromancers. Maybe the odd Warrior with eight tanking skills. So hard and overpowering that balanced builds don't even stand the slightest chance. Or are, in any case, not given a chance by the community. And in any case, hard or not, simply not fun. Just mentioning the word "DoA" in my guild and people hurry away to mind some other business.

Oh, except for farming, of course. I mean, you just need to be two, really, and you just go out gemfarming. Easy peasy. Lots and lots of gold coins!



Sigh.



I know, it's too late for Guild Wars, but please, please don't make the same mistakes again for Guild Wars 2.

If you mean no incentives to do quest except for missions, then yes I agree with you 100%.

GW is a buy and play game, the only income NC-Soft has from the game is sales of the game, goldfarmers buy alot of new games, yes they might have a slight impact on the in game economy but they help to keep the servers running.
They don't want to get rid of them, just keep them buying new accounts.

Umm the gold farmers and sellers buy copies of the game, in game, alot of the people wanting to buy Proph/Fact/NF are gold farmers.

ex: "WTB: Extra copies of prophecies, paying 100k ..."

People still Ebay for the sole reason as this, they say:

"You are not paying for the actual GOLD, but the TIME and EFFORT i put into this"

gg.

exactly i go on at 2 in the morning, on american districts and i see ATLEAST 6maybe 7 "people" in there...

Exactly which prices have skyrocketed? Weapons are cheaper than ever. Materials, other then gems, haven't gone up in a year. Most runes are cheaper than ever.

How long has the OP played Guild Wars? I'm sure there are many that remember ecto being almost 20K, superior vigor at 70K, black dye at 20K+, every monk rune at 25K, and many, many other items at much higher prices than they are now.

Ecto went from 6 to ~10K
Black Dye went from 7 to ~10K
Some superior runes went from 120 gold to 1K-ish again
Gems went from 2K to ~7-10K
shars went from 2K to ~3,5K

Weapon prices went down, though, since it's much easier getting a req 9 15^50 now (inscriptions)

Prices went slightly up cause of less farming. Now, less ecto's etc. are being produced in the game, so price goes up.


I remember the days of 18K ecto's, 100K sup absorptions etc. The reason was that there were no quick UW solo builds back then.

I remember when ecto's were 4k for a while x.x. Too bad I was a noob in those times and had no money to buy any.

Just to chime in and say that I'm in full agreement with Lagg.
We should be rewarded on an achievement basis, not our ability to mindlessly kill the same mobs over and over and over again.

I think there needs to be something done to devalue ecto (and after that, black dye, and then gems, and then any other 'inventory-stackable' high-priced commodity). People at this point have stacks and stacks of ecto (yes, these people do exist), and can control and manipulate the market. ANet constantly removes the viability of various farming builds but they do absolutely nothing to bring the already-rich people in check with the conditions of their supposed 'optimal' economy conditions. This is the main problem with the game. The bots aren't. Who cares if the bots are farming gold and selling it if there are several ways in the game to make it yourself? ANet invalidates one set of farming skills/builds from the game, others rise to prominence, and all the old players just flock to those new ones instead. There's no change in the farming numbers, just a drastic reduction in the various builds players can run to actually farm. ANet sacrifices game variety (read: fun) for no change in actual farming output.

Warriors are supposed to be the best at melee, but these days with the scatter-causing of Glad's Defense & Cyclone Axe (btw ANet, I want them BACK ASAP), a Warrior's best farming build is one that barely uses a weapon AT ALL - the Vengeful Was Khanhei Warrior. It's so damn lame that players have to resort to that kind of stuff these days. There's no wonder why people lose interest in this game so rapidly. For players, these basic AoE builds bring in, what? Maybe 10-15k an hour, tops? Compare that with DoA farming which can bring in considerably more (and until the gem-specific builds became popular used to bring in even MORE than that). Ecto farming is still as rampant as ever, so nerfs to those skills/builds were all but useless as well. Where is the inflation coming from, ANet? Surely you stopped it when you added almost every popular AoE PvE skill to the 'scatter' list. Well, inflation is not only still existent, but worse than ever. There are a small number of ecto-stack-having players who can keep prices high because they simply don't need to compete with the people who are 'worthless'. The rich are richer then they've ever been, and today's poor players have no easy escape from their poverty anymore like the rich players once did.


Over the course of GW's lifespan, ANet became too preoccupied with stopping bot farming and didn't concern themselves at all with how much fun normal players have had using those damn builds. This is one of the big player alienations that they have to live with today. ANet needs to realize that one of the most popular topics of any long-time GW player is the golden days of GW, aka the Pre-AoE-scatter era and how much of a blast they had during that time. Sure AoE scatter makes the game slightly more realistic, but is it fun? HELL NO. I only say 'slightly' more realistic because in a real-world situation you'd have to expect an enemy group to not sit there while missiles are raining down on them constantly, but in this game every type of monster runs AT THE SAME EXACT TIME. It's so robotic and ridiculous. Giants aren't supposed to be known for their intelligence, but here in the world of GW they are as 'AoE-smart' as trained Kournan soldiers.

I remember one of Gaile's comments in the Hard Mode Dev Update was that ANet was looking at how the AoE scatter was causing player discontent. Hopefully they have given it some serious thought, and if not getting rid of it entirely, would concede at least giving it a bit more leeway and flexibility than we currently have. I have this theory that smite scatter with the E/Me UW solo build is linked to how much of your anti-farming code has kicked in. (At least for me, it seems that the Sandstorm-Earthquake-Aftershock combo works more effectively scatter-wise when I haven't been in UW for a while.) Maybe it should be made that way for all mobs? Only make the mobs 'AoE-smart' if they're being farmed (ie. with the triggering of the anti-farm code, suggesting dozens of repeat runs of the same area)? I don't know. Just a thought.


Keep in mind that the way the game is today isn't killing my enjoyment personally of the game (I still play it for hours almost every day), but in no way will I say that I love this game as much as I once did.


On a side note, I think green items should have a higher merchant value than they do (1k minimum). It doesn't take long before most greens become 'unwanted'. At least let these players get some sort of extra monetary reward for getting these. Most greens people get go right to the merchant. They're supposed to be special items, right? The merchant thinks of them as white drops.

It's difficult to say something is a fact because it is "fun", because fun is extremely relative in every case.

I'd like to start off by saying that I've been playing for almost a year, and that I am a casual farmer myself - I farm only when I need the money for a set of 15k armor for a character; Even then, that's limited to one set per toon. Any more than that is a waste of money in my opinion.

I see a lot of rants and even a few suggestions here, but I think there's something we all need to remember - The botters get access to the same skills and builds that we do. If they make it easier for us to farm, it makes it easier for them to farm too. Anet is stuck between a rock and a hard place; they really can't fix one thing without it affecting the other. I don't think that they're cutting their own throats as it were, because it's not impossible to farm. It may take longer to get that 15k stockpile of gold than it was before, but that's a result of people taking advantage of software to generate RL money for them without there being a) a provision for such a thing in the EULA, and b) there's no kickback for Anet. Software that people can use to make money costs a lot more than $50; Typically such software can cost btwn $100-$800 just for one license. As the saying goes, the bad spoil it for the good.

As for TideSwayer, I really would like to see how you propose that Anet devalue ecto. If anything it's the players themselves that have made the value of ecto what it is. The way I see it, the only way that they could do it is by removing it as a crafting material for sets of 15k armor. Other than that, it's the players who want to buy it that have to stop buying it. Also, if people want to stockpile ectos, then I say let them. I stockpile all sorts of things that I could sell for decent money - candy canes, alcohol, bunnies, etc. Again, that's a player-driven deal, not a game-driven one.

I changed around my post so many times before hitting 'Post Reply' that I forgot I left that part in there. I was only using the 'devalue' statement to suggest that is the only way ANet can truly stop the in-game inflation, and that it wouldn't ever happen from destroying farmable builds/areas of the game (as is ANet's belief). I don't know how they would reduce demand for stackable commodity items themselves (without having something incredibly forced like an ecto-drops-anywhere weekend event or something - not that I'm in favor of that). Changing some of the means for acquiring these items (through build/area nerfing) doesn't remove ALL the means, which means it doesn't ever really remove the buildup of these items in players' inventories.

@Tideswayer - I take it you have no ectos. I have only one, so your suggestion to devalue them would not affect me.

But you seem to think it would be fair for ANet to suddenly wipe away other players' bank accounts, because they have more money than you do. Not every player with a big bank got it by selling or buying gold.

Hmm, I`m all for the anti farming codes I just wish they would go further.

OK that sounds a bit harsh but I`m all for the do quests+missions and play through the game, maybe even go back and help others. But I have noticed when doing this the drops are just, well let`s face it, CRAP ( eg. 4 white drops during the Nundu mission, what`s the point? ), unless of course you`re a very lucky player.

So what to do??? Seems that to make gold in the game you have to farm and I`m just as guilty as anyone, make a W/Rt and get some ectos or look for the latest farming build on this forum or anywhere else I can Google. Not what I want to do but how else am I supposed to get FOW armour for my chars?

Solution? Don`t know if it`s possible but keep a log of a chars areas and increase rewards if char is visiting an area after being elsewhere (the more areas visited the better) and reduce drops if repeatedly going in area. I think this is in action anyway but if it is it`s not enough to make it work.

As for the AI scatter and paying real money for in game stuff, lol. No way, you`re just cracking me up, rofl! It`s only a game, oh well it`s you`re money and it`s going to a good cause I suppose and putting food on plates somewhere, maybe or hopefully.

Actually I have way more than 1 ecto. And you don't get my point at all. My point isn't that ANet should nerf players' accounts, but that their goal of reducing the money in the game by taking away farming builds/areas hasn't worked, and that the only thing that has happened as a result of that is reducing a lot of fun players had using those builds.

Show me where I inferred that people got their money from buying or selling gold. I'm pretty sure I made clear that many players got their fortunes through much easier methods than is possible today, which isn't fair at all to existing players. The bottom line anymore is that the only way to make substantial money in this game is to overkill farm any new items once they come out. If you miss the boat, you miss the loot. Simple as that. I wasn't talking about my situation at all. I can use existing farming builds just fine (and do). I do believe that ANet needs to be wary of how 'rare' they make certain items (rare minipets, I'm looking at you) because of how easy it is for the rich players to manipulate the market. Look at the rare minipet market right now. A few months ago even the limited edition minipets could be had by players even with just a few dozen ecto. Pretty steep price in and of itself, but more than attainable for most any player who really wanted to have one. These days, you need around a stack just to get any of the cool rare ones. Why is this? Because the players already with ecto are using their ecto to buy this stuff and then mark up the price for subsequent buyers. It's ri-goddamn-diculous.

....And don't even bring up the fact that "I don't need these minipets to enjoy the game... blah blah blah." The point is the average player (once again, not talking about me) should have reasonable means to acquire anything in the game he/she desires. People have wanted a rollerbeetle minipet since Day 1 of Nightfall. What does ANet do? They put 75 of them in the game per region. Gee, thanks. Yeah, now I can (finally) have my damn rollerbeetle minipet. Too bad it will cost me ~400 ecto to acquire.

My situation lies more from a fun standpoint rather than an economical boon one. I used to have fun using these older builds and would love to have their effectiveness restored. For example, killing Vermin with the basic W/Mo Cyclone Axe/Glad's Defense build was one of my favorite things to do. Too slow these days with all the damn scatter. Now Vermin are still farmable by other means, but that doesn't explain why ANet had to remove one combination that worked without removing them all. Either sink the boat or leave all the existing passengers on it. Leaving the boat with just the captain and crew doesn't reduce the flow of money from that area, at all.

Why is there a new Ebay thread started about once a week. Get over it, Ebay obviously doesn't have that much of a large impact. Items that cost 100k + ecto will always cost that even if it Ebay never existed.

By the way, I've had an idea as to why Kuunavang is becoming so expensive.
Kuunavang is a limited edition pet, right?
This means there can only be a finite amount in the GW universe.
What's to stop some malicious rich player buying and destroying them?
The more that player destroys, the more valuable the pet becomes.
It sounds excessive, but I'm sure somebody out there has had the idea.
And this is why tradeable unique items as collector's edition rewards is a bad idea.
Kuunavang should not have been tradeable from the get-go.
Same with Varesh.
In the end, someone WILL take advantage of the hypothesis I've proposed and a minipet that used to be widespread will all but disappear from the game, further distorting the economy.

Ecto nerfing? Kuunavang genocide? WTH? Kill all the conspiracy theories. That fact is that farming continues, farmers will never go anywhere, and if ANet makes exclusive and hard to obtain weapons/items, then prices for aforementioned items will natuarally skyrocket.

Those who take advantage of the VERY capitalist based economy, will always be ahead. Nature is what motivates the masses to do what is done. RL or ingame.